This publication is one outcome of a project on labour mobility between the Nordic-Baltic countries: “Enhanced Nordic-Baltic co-operation on challenges of labour mobility in the Nordic-Baltic region” that the Nordic Council of Ministers’ Offi ce in Lithuania led during 2014-2016 in co-operation with the the Nordic Council of Ministers’ Offi ces in Estonia and Latvia, and Nordregio in Sweden. Th e overall objective of the project was to facilitate understanding and strengthen co-operation within the Nordic-Baltic region on labour mobility and demographic development across Nordic and Baltic municipalities and regions. Th e project is a follow-up of the initiative “Challenges of Migration in the Nordic-Baltic Region: Impact on National Labour Markets, Welfare State and Demographic Situation” implemented by the Nordic Council of Ministers’ Offi ces in the Baltic States in 2013. Among other activities realized within the framework of this 2014-2016 initiative are the following conferences: • Family and Migration in the Baltic-Nordic Region: Challenges and Solutions, Vilnius, 21 November 2014 • Labour Migration in the Nordic-Baltic Region: Trends of Labour Migration - Ready for Changes? Tallinn, 27 March 2015 For a full overview of the project and related publications, please see Nordregio’s website: www.nordregio.se/BLAM

This report presents background research on the work carried out by Nordregio in the project “Social Innovation in Local Development in the Nordic Countries and Scotland”, which was commissioned by the Nordic Council of Ministers’ Working Group on Demography and Welfare. The main objectives of the project were to investigate the concept of social innovation in relation to local and rural development, study the governance context in social innovation in rural areas in the Nordics and Scotland, conduct case studies in rural areas in all the Nordic countries and Scotland, as well as study the existing support systems for social innovation in particular in rural areas. The case studies are summarised in a separate document and on the project’s website.

Whether cities can provide a high quality of life for their inhabitants is an increasingly pressing question, especially in the light of rapid urbanization and climate change. However, recent research from four Nordic city-regions —which include Malmö, Stavanger, Aalborg and Tampere, and the areas around them—shows that detailed knowledge about inhabitants—permanent, temporary, new, multi-generational, or otherwise—in every part and subset of the city-region is lacking in spatial planning. If knowledge about the lives of those living in the city-regions is insufficient, then, how can specific spatial structures for a city-region be proposed as responses to different sustainability chal­lenges?

As a response, this policy brief proposes that, city-region planners should adopt Everyday Life Theory, (1) to influence everyday life practices in support of city-region sustainability; and (2) to better connect spatial structure/ urban form with existing sustainability challenges. By adopting Everyday Life Theory, we mean that planning should be based on empirical knowledge about the needs and experiences of different groups of people in relation to four different dimensions: employment, housing provision, mobility and social reproduction.

The old age dependency rate is a ticking time bomb that threatens to blow the Nordic welfare model into pieces. Old age dependency rates are rising across the Nordic countries as in most parts of Europe. Due to a selective outmigration of young people towards the cities, the dependency rates are particularly high in rural municipalities, where access to healthcare services is one of the major issues. This issue of Nordregio News focuses on recent migration flows and the Nordic societies’ readiness to welcome the newcomers.

One possible policy option for countries concernedabout declining or aging populations is replacementmigration – allowing or even encouraginginternational migration in order to counteract declineand aging of native populations. In the pasttwo decades, net international migration into theNordic region has been a much larger contributorto population growth than natural increase. Thispolicy brief explores the likely demographic contributionof migration to population growth in theNordic countries in the future and the extent that itcould compensate for population decline or aging.

One possible policy option for countries concerned about declining or aging populations is replacement migration – allowing or even encouraging international migration in order to counteract decline and aging of native populations. In the past two decades, net international migration into the Nordic region has been a much larger contributor to population growth than natural increase. This policy brief explores the likely demographic contribution of migration to population growth in the Nordic countries in the future and the extent that it could compensate for population decline or aging.

The population of a country grows or declines as a result of thecombination of two trends. One is natural increase, the difference between the number of births and deaths. A number of European countries have been experiencing ‘negative naturalincrease’ (i.e. more deaths than births) because women havehad fertility rates well below two children per woman and olderage structures. In recent decades, the Nordic countries have had positive natural increase as a result of having relatively higher fertility rates of just below two children per woman and relatively younger age structures.

In this issue of Nordregio News, we focus on cross-border co-operation and its impact on regional development in Nordicand European border regions. We have studied how crossborder co-operation is structured and managed, and whether its full potential for sustainable growth has been realized. Theadded value of cross-border co-operation can be defined and measured in various ways, including improvement of crossborder infrastructure and increasing flows of tourists.

As a follow-up to the Handbook on Demographic Challenges in the Nordic countries, the Nordregio Working Paper Local and Regional Approaches to Demographic Change looks closer at examples of how to meet demographic challenges at local and regional levels.

The questions of how to retain and attract young populations are central issues for regional policy development in the Nordic Arctic. Nordregio and the Nordic working group on sustainable regional development in the Arctic have carried out an analysis to uncover young people's own perspectives of their future possibilities in Arctic communities. This policy brief summarises the main findings of a number of qualitative case studies about young people living in remote locations. The aim is to voice the ambitions and future expectations of the young generation.

This report concludes a three-year foresight process on the topic of future sustainable regional development in the Nordic Arctic (2013–2016), based on the mandate given by the Nordic Council of Ministers’ Committee of Senior Officials for Regional Policy to the Nordic Working Group for Sustainable Regional Development in the Arctic. The mandate has been “to provide input to the further development of the NCM Arctic Co-operation Programme by collecting, reviewing and analysing existing information, assessing different preconditions for future development in the area and developing future scenarios. This will contribute to the political debate and give a more holistic overview of the scientific knowledge in the field.” The Nordic Working Group decided to implement this task by conducting a foresight analysis. To guide the work of the three-year project, three overarching questions were defined for the foresight analysis. 1. What social and resource conditions can be expected to have a decisive influence on regional development in the Arctic over the next 10, 20 and 30 years? 2. How will the management of these conditions affect the living standards and future prospects for the regions? 3. What are the implications of the identified challenges and opportunities for future planning and regional policy? Previous foresight analyses have been carried out for the North Calotte region as part of the broader geographical area of the Northern Sparsely Populated Areas (Gløersen et al. 2009) and for the West Nordic countries (Gløersen, 2012). However, this is the first foresight analysis that covers the Nordic Arctic region as a whole. It has been essential for this study to adopt a bottom-up perspective in the process with participation from citizens of local communities across the Nordic Arctic in the initial vision phase. As part of the process, specific attention has also been paid to youth participation and local and regional business development potential. As a supple- 1. Introduction ment to the foresight analysis, Working Papers have been produced on the topics of youth perspectives on future development (Karlsdóttir and Jungsberg, 2015) and challenges and opportunities for sustainable business development (Olsen et al. 2016).

It takes on average five to ten years for a refugee to find work in the Nordic countries. As social inclusion is closely linked to successful labour market integration, and as during this period the refugee represents a cost to society, the question of how to ensure access to the labour market has been a prominent issue on the political agenda. Since the countries show both differences and similarities in their migration policies and practical solutions, the question is how we can learn from each other.

In 2016 the Nordic Council of Ministers initiated a co-operation programme designed to support the national efforts on integrationof refugees and immigrants. The Nordic Welfare Centre has the overall responsibility for the main project “Nordic collaboration on integration of refugees and migrants” in close collaboration with Nordregio.

The aim of the project is to serve as an idea bank on the integration area, to map out existing knowledge and research, and to expand our common knowledge base on integration. This report was produced by Nordregio on behalf of the Nordic Welfare Centre and is the result of a comparative study of policies and measures in place in the countries for achieving more efficient labour market integration of refugees.

This is a theme issue of Nordregio News, offering you an overview of industrial symbiosis in the Nordic countries. By browsing through this issue you will get a picture of what it is, why has it become a hot topic, what motivates the industries to get involved and what interesting results we have found through our case studies.

This is a special issue of Nordregio News, offering you an overview of current research areas and projects that we are involved in here at Nordregio. With the new layout and content structure, we wish to make the magazine more readable and easier to navigate.

In 2015, we have put substantial resources into research commissioned and funded by the four Nordic working groups under the Nordic Council of Ministers’ Committee of Senior Officials for Regional Policy: Demography and welfare; Sustainable regional development in the Arctic; Green growth - innovation and entrepreneurship; and Sustainable urban regions. We are pleased to say that many regional case studies, Foresight analysis and policy overviews were conducted during the year, in addition to the development and launch of the interactive web-mapping tool, NordMap. The Nordic Demography Programme was finalised and three large-scale EU-funded projects started: REGINA, Baltic SCOPE and Baltic Urban Lab. More information on some of these projects will be found in this issue.

Brownfield regeneration involves the redevelopment of underutilised areas of a city. This contributes to limiting urban sprawl and promotes investment to restore land that has been contaminated by industrial activity. As such, it is an important path towards more integrated, resilient and sustainable urban development. The European Environment Agency (EEA) estimates that there are three million urban brownfield sites with potential for future regeneration in Europe. In the Baltic Urban Lab project, partners around the Central Baltic Region have identified planning challenges in brownfield regeneration and developed solutions to tackle them through early and broad stakeholder involvement.

The map shows population change 2008-2017 at a statistical grid level of 1,000 x 1,000 meters. In this map, the data is localised through the grid cell midpoints to create visual homogeneity across national borders. The map is part of the report ‘Population change dynamics in Nordic municipalities - grid data as a tool for studying residential change at local level’, which is the main output from the Thematic Group for Sustainable Cities and Urban Development -project ‘Small and medium-sized cities in the Nordic and Arctic regions’.

The report seeks to form a more nuanced understanding of the population developments occurring in the Nordics that may be less apparent, or not evident at all, at more general territorial levels. The intention of the study is to shed light on the following questions: What types of population dynamics occurred in the Nordic countries at the municipal and grid levels during 2008–2017? To what degree do changes at the local level correspond to more general population development at the municipal level? What types of changes can be seen within municipalities, especially in small and medium-sized cities? Findings from the project demonstrate that population data at the grid level are well-suited for identifying demographic change processes and trends occurring within regions and municipalities.

While this study concentrates on changes in population size over time, it is evident that gridded statistics offer further potential for uncovering trends that are concealed at more general levels of analysis. To fully realise the potential of grid level data at the Nordic level, further harmonisation of data processing and availability is required.

The map was produced through the project Small and Medium-sized Cities in the Nordic Countries and has also been published in Nordregio Report 2019:1: Population Change Dynamics in Nordic Municipalities – Grid data as a tool for studying residential change at local level which can be found here: http://doi.org/10.30689/R2019:1.1403-2503

This publication is the outcome of a comparative study focusing on immigrant women’s access to the labour market in small and medium-sized cities in the Arctic region. The study is funded by the Nordic Gender Equality Fund, which supports projects aimed at knowledge sharing and problem solving with regards to gender equality across the Nordic countries. The research was carried out by the University of Akureyri, Nordregio and the University of Lapland. The project was to investigate policies and applied practices in three small and medium-sized cities in the Nordic countries: Akureyri in Iceland, Luleå in Sweden and Rovaniemi in Finland. The objective was to identify and share best practices for improving labour market integration among immigrant women. The project also sought to examine how private and public actors may improve the opportunities in the labour market for immigrant women, as well as to give these women a voice through in-depth interviews about their labour market integration experiences in the abovementioned Nordic Arctic cities. The case studies figuring in this publication are to be taken as a first explorative enquiry into the varied local circumstances regarding labour marketintegration and practices. The case studies andthe desktop research form the basis for this publication. The University of Akureyri conducted the case study in Akureyri, Nordregio in Luleå and the University of Lapland in Rovaniemi. The interviews for the case studies were carried out between September and December 2017. Subsequently, the material from each case study was analysed with desktop material, articles and documents ondifferent language and labour market measures. It is important to keep in mind that this area of research is highly dynamic, and the different initiatives in place are subject to change due to e.g.political change.

Contemporary challenges for the development of sustainable urban regions in the Nordic countries relate to how physical planning can contribute to green growth and city-regional competitiveness. More specifically, three types of challenges have been identified. The first relates to urban form and issues involving urban qualities and densification processes, accommodating rapid population growth, localisation and the mixing of urban functions. The second relates to social inclusion and segregation, the everyday life perspective and diversified lifestyles and mobility. Finally, while planning at the city-regional scale is increasingly seen as a way to meet these challenges, such a perspective also calls into question the traditional ways in which Nordic cities and regions are planned; the third type of challenge is therefore the fact that there is a recognised need for new and innovative forms of planning and governance.

In this report, grid-based statistics from different Nordic countries are used in an integrated way to study demographic changes at local level within regions, municipalities and cities; especially cities or towns that could be considered small and medium-sized. One of the main methodological questions guiding the study is how fine-grained grid-level statistics can be used as a compliment to more general statistics bound to administrative areas such as municipalities and regions. This report seeks to form a more nuanced understanding of the population developments occurring in the Nordics that may be less apparent, or not evident at all, at more general territorial levels. The intention of the study is to shed light on the following questions: What types of population dynamics occurred in the Nordic countries at the municipal and grid levels during 2008–2017? To what degree do changes at the local level correspond to more general population development at the municipal level? What types of changes can be seen within municipalities, especially in small and medium-sized cities?

The findings show that, the Nordic Region is undergoing highly unbalanced population develop­ment, and there are notable differences in demo­graphic trends both between and within countries.

Also, the findings demonstrate that population data at the grid level are well-suited for identifying demographic change processes and trends occurring within regions and municipalities. While this study concentrates on changes in population size over time, it is evident that gridded statistics offer further potential for uncovering trends that are concealed at more general levels of analysis. To fully realise the potential of grid level data at the Nordic level, further harmonisation of data processing and availability is required.

The population change map on page 19 can be found seperately through this link: http://norden.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2%3A1280442&dswid=8902

Why this buzz about bioeconomy, you might wonder? Perhaps because it can be seen as a “silver bullet”, able to avert several staggering threats to our societies: economic and demographic decline in rural areas; joblessness and the climate crises. Clearly, there are several good reasons for the Nordic countries to dig deeper into their bountiful biological assets. First, it is about replacing fossil fuels with biofuels and replacing non-degradable products with bio-degradable ones. Second, the bioeconomy could boost the productivity and product development within agriculture, fisheries, forestry and the chemical industry. Finally, the bioeconomy creates new jobs in sparsely populated areas, by utilizing existing natural resources in new ways.

This Working Paper by Nordregio presents the results of five case studies on bioeconomy in Nordic regions. It contributes to the discussion on bioeconomy in the Nordic countries by focusing on its implications for regional development and policy.

Many small and medium-sized Nordic cities are dealing with challenges related to the role and development of their city centres. They use strategies related to urban planning, governance and business development, to aim for greater compactness, attractiveness, economic development and sustainability. What can we learn from the Nordic countries’ different approaches to city-centre development? This policy brief summarises investigations in six small and medium-sized Nordic cities.

In this report, the characteristics and consequences of the compact city ideal in Nordic cities, and more specifically in their city centres, are investigated. The research was done in the form of a series of small case studies of city centre development, and they are presented thematically. They focus on public spaces and the threat from external shopping, densification as a planning strategy, new housing as a planning tool, and finally governance and actor collaboration. The Nordic region is dominated by small and medium sized cities, and we chose the following cities for our investigation of city centre challenges and planning strategies: Bodø (Norway), Kokkola (Finland), Mariehamn (Åland), Mosfellsbær (Iceland), Sorø (Denmark) and Västervik (Sweden).

The cities were investigated through planning and policy documents, interviews and observations, and the work was guided by the following questions: What does “the compact city” mean in the investigated cities – and how is it operationalized? What are the main planning problems related to city centres, and what are the visions for the future in relation to these? What can we learn from different ways of approaching city centre development across the different Nordic countries? Two strong themes related to development in city centres, and to the commonly held view that the city core needs to be strengthened, regenerated or recreated, are competition from external shopping centres, and urban sprawl.

These themes point to the challenges to the central city as the one and only centre. The examples from the Nordic region show that the competition from external shopping is very real, and that planning regulations do not always have the desired effect on the competition. This has led to a variety of responses – new central housing, new attractive spaces, new types of plans and new governance collaborations. In addition to their different approaches to competition from external shopping, cities employ diverse strategies to increase the critical mass of people who populate the city and its venues.

This study was interested in what the city centre is, or should be, when it no longer has an obvious role. The investigations have led us to conclude that there is no essence to be found and it is instead important to understand the city centre as dynamic and constantly changing. In line with this, the importance of actor collaboration and flexible urban spaces are among the lessons learned from the study.

In order to emphasize the diversity and variety of Nordic regions and municipalities, Nordregio has been utilising the concept of “demographic vulnerabilities”, which is based on demographic data. This approach has been used since 2011 to analyse Nordic and Baltic municipalities and regions. In this project, it will be brought up to date, relying on statistical data from 2018, with a focus on the Swedish – Norwegian border.

This policy brief aims to provide planners with a clearer understanding of the opportunities and challenges presented by the use of sustainability indicators to support urban planning and policy-making.

This policy brief offers local and regional planners an introduction to the world of integrated urban modelling. It provides information on their potential benefits, implementation process and current use in the Nordic city-regions.

This working paper presents the results of a survey on the use of Integrated Urban Models in the Nordic countries carried out by Nordregio's researchers (with preparatory support from WSP Analysis and Strategy). It reveals that the use of models is limited in the Nordic countries and provides an account of the underlying reasons why, despite the potential benefits they offer, models aren't more widely used.